


Black Metallic

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Angst, Book Tag, F/M, Missing Scene, Nancy Drew Files, Romance, Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from Files 30, Death By Design.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Metallic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glasheen25 (children_of_lir)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/children_of_lir/gifts).



In the elevator, on their way down for the three o'clock meeting, Nancy closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, feeling the unpleasant lurch of her stomach as the car swiftly descended. If her plan worked, in fifteen minutes tops she'd be in a cab speeding toward the hospital; they would rush her to a room and clean her out and she would be all right again. Calling Ned, demanding that he drive to Chicago to be with her, had been weak and pessimistic of her, and she would feel foolish for it later, she knew. _Be here to support me for two hours while I solve the case,_ she thought to herself, a light blush prickling in her cheeks. Ned wasn't saying anything, but she could feel him close to her.

And his hand on hers. Firmer than usual. His fingers were tight and his skin was warm, but she couldn't bear the thought of pulling away.

Even if, two hours from now, he was at her bedside in the hospital, laughing about how nervous he had been, it would have been worth it, she thought, and then opened her eyes and found him staring straight at her.

He brought his hand up and rested the ball of his thumb gently against her slightly parted lips, his other hand still holding hers. He shook his head a little. "I feel like I can taste it on you," he whispered, apologetically, his brown eyes warm with sympathy.

"Oh," she whispered, his thumb brushing her lips at the movement, but she knew it to the bone. She felt it too, like a fine heavy sediment weighting her lungs, pooling in her heart, tightening her joints. In her fever-dreams she imagined that her blood would glow in the dark, would burn through anything it touched, was boiling scalding-hot in her veins. He had called her Superwoman; she could feel it in her blood like some ravaging virus, more insinuating and dangerous than kryptonite.

Pieces of home. She closed her eyes again, rocking on her heels as the elevator slowed its descent, nearing their destination. She had called her piece of home, and here he was; and even as strong as his support made her feel, she also had to fight a continual and seductive urge to let herself fall apart, to let all the fear and rage she had been keeping at bay just go loose, with him.

If only it wouldn't take all the energy she'd need to get through these next few minutes.

They walked off the elevator together and he didn't let go of her hand.

\--

Twelve hours.

She was dreaming. She was dead and in the hospital, with all the tubes going into her, right before she had died, she had turned into a mermaid, and Ned had said that he never loved her; now she swam, invisible, through a sweltering hot church. Hannah was there, with a bucket of fish, and her father was there, wearing a blue suit, but he had no shoes. Bess was standing at the altar, in a seafoam green ballet costume Nancy recognized from the recital they had performed at the end of their third year. Her lips were a vivid red. She had no bouquet; she carried a large silver and ruby pin, the stone big as a fist, but the clasp had rusted an ominous deep orange. Bess turned and for a moment Nancy thought her friend had seen her, but she was looking through her; Nancy spun around and saw Ned, standing at the entrance to the church, wearing a black leather tuxedo with zipper-attached tails.

Then Nancy knew that he was going to marry Bess.

She woke up gasping loudly, her head thick and miserable, limbs burning with fever. She kicked and pushed at the blankets, feeling impotent and angry and deeply depressed. She brushed a hand over her cheek and found that she had been crying in her sleep.

Nancy forced herself to stop struggling and lie quietly on the sheets, listening abstractly to the air conditioner as it hummed to itself in the corner. When she closed her eyes an utterly skull-crushing headache pounded behind her eyes, and she knew suddenly, unassailably, completely illogically, that if she closed her eyes and went back to sleep, she would turn to stone. The poison was cement in her veins and it would harden and if she tried to move, she would break and dissolve into a pile of powdered concrete.

She blinked up at the ceiling, groaning very quietly to herself. _I'm losing my mind._

She grabbed the phone before she could talk herself out of it, but it took four painstakingly long tries before she succeeded in dialing Ned's room.

"Nan?" he answered immediately.

There were no filters between them anymore. Even so, she tried to come up with something more eloquent and failed, before resorting to a simple "I need you."

"I'll be right there."

Bess was snoring very quietly to herself, and Nancy shot a brief sharp glance at her as she unlocked the door to their suite. Then she saw the tissues littering the bedside table, the one still clutched in Bess's fist, and almost felt like crying herself. She sagged against the wall beside the door, resting her hot forehead against the wallpaper.

_The biggest celebration ever,_ she repeated to herself. She caught herself counting heartbeats, wondering how many she had left.

Ned had time to rap on the door once before Nancy pulled it open, gesturing as strongly as she could for quiet. Her center of balance wasn't right, and she could hear shadows, and her entire body ached unforgivingly. "Shh," she mouthed, moving aside and letting him in. He trailed behind her as they went back into her bedroom, and she closed the door behind her.

"Did you have an epiphany?"

Ned still had his voice down, but there was something in the way he was looking at her, that fixed stare at her face... Nancy glanced down and realized that she had answered the door for him wearing nothing but a t-shirt and panties.

She shook her head, slowly, and the ground seemed to actually tremble under her feet. She had to sway with it, and she noticed the alarm in his face as she did. "No," she said mournfully. "I would love to go on a walk with you but I don't think I could make it."

"You need to get back in bed," he told her, sternly but gently. He pushed back the tangled mass of sheets, blankets and duvet and gestured for her to get in bed. "We can talk just as well that way."

Nancy made to cross her arms stubbornly, but the motion made her nauseated, and suddenly chills were radiating out from her spine, down to her fingertips, down her bare legs to her cold toes. Teeth chattering, she slid back into bed. "Cold," she told him, watching his eyes soften with concern and fear.

"Nan," he whispered, and she could hear the heartbreak in his voice.

She closed her eyes and the nausea blurred and swam in her, but the headache roared back. "Hold me," she whispered, before she even knew that she was thinking it, her voice small and weak, and to her horror and tiny wave of relief she felt tears pricking in her eyes, sliding fat cool tracks down her skin.

She hated crying. She hated herself for crying. He had already seen her like this, when she had told him, but this... she had half a day left and her father was stuck in the middle of nowhere in Canada and it was entirely, colossally unfair. Kim Daley was a bitch who treated everyone around her badly, and just because she had agreed to help her find out who was threatening her, now Nancy felt every beat of her heart like another handful of grains through the hourglass.

He hesitated before stepping out of his jeans, and when he slid into bed with her Nancy immediately moved toward him, cold skin aching for the warmth of his embrace. She couldn't stop trembling, and she pressed her face into his shoulder, closing her eyes.

"Better?" He traced his fingers gently down the line of her spine and she felt an entirely inappropriate answering quiver radiate through her hips.

"Yeah," she whispered, her mouth against his shoulder, and caught his shirt in her teeth. "I'm sorry."

He glanced a kiss against her temple. "You don't have anything to be sorry about."

"Yeah I do," she murmured, arching as his fingertips trailed against the small of her back. "I always... thought..."

"You always thought what," he whispered, his lips grazing her cheek, and her own lips parted.

"That you'd ask me to marry you again one day," she said, drawing her knees up as another chill raced over her. "For real this time."

"You're going to be fine."

She nodded, nuzzling in closer to him. "Yeah," she whispered, and gasped in a quiet sob.

"Shh," he whispered, stroking her hair. "Nan, Nan, it's okay. It's okay."

"You know it isn't," she burst out. "Ned..." She pulled back to peer at his face, still shivering. "I love you so much."

"I love you too," he whispered, and she saw something change in his eyes, and then he was trailing kisses down her cheek, her jaw, and she was uncomfortably aware of the sweat on her skin and the fine sediment choking her veins, but she didn't care. He slid her shirt up, and she shivered as she arched and moaned her acceptance.

"Nan... God, I want you," he whispered, as he left the shirt bunched under her breasts, and his voice was hushed, hesitant. He wouldn't meet her eyes, not even when she touched his cheek.

"I want you too," she whispered. Her lips were trembling. "Please."

He drew her shirt up and off, and she rolled onto her back, gazing up at him, shaking. She could feel her heart beating, and it hurt. Everything hurt. 

Then his hands glanced over her breasts and she arched into it, the pain held at bay by the sheer intensity of her concentration and desire, reaching for his own shirt. She put her arms around him once he was barechested, and he rolled onto his side, sliding down to close his mouth over the firm tip of one of her breasts. She slid her hands into his hair, shuddering as he suckled against her nipple.

"Ned," she whispered, curving her body around his, inner thigh close against his skin. He pulled back and her nipple was wet, swelled from his attention, and she felt his breath against her bare flesh before he gently took the other into his mouth. He smoothed the ball of his thumb where his mouth had so recently been, stroking the hardened tip in time with his suckling, and she jerked once, gently.

She wanted to open her legs to him, so she did. She wanted to touch him, so she traced slow curves over the backs of his shoulders, the line of his neck. His teeth closed around her nipple gently and she cupped the back of his head loosely, whimpering once.

And then, slowly, as she felt that slim invisible line draw up inside her, the dim but insistent awareness of the faint pulse between her thighs, in the rhythm he had teased awake in her, he pulled back. She was shaking, so he untangled the sheets and pulled them up over her, drawing her close when she reached for him again. 

"What's wrong," she whispered against his neck, her knee over his hip. She wanted to slowly, deliberately press her hips to his, but he was too quiet, his fingers gently stroking the back of her neck.

"I can't do this to you."

"You aren't doing anything to me," she objected, even as she felt that slim line grow fainter, shifting only when her nipples moved against his chest. "We're doing this."

"And what?" He sounded angry. "And then tomorrow, we find whoever did this, you're better, and... this? Never happened."

"And if we don't, it'll be just that much harder for you to get over me," she said, the disappointment and hurt trembling in her voice.

"What the hell, Nancy?"

"If I'm dead, it won't matter—"

He cupped her chin in his hands, tilting her face back so he could look into her eyes. "You aren't going to die. You aren't."

"I will," she corrected him, shaking with another chill. "Maybe tomorrow. If we're lucky, maybe not. But we've been in bad situations before and..." She took a deep breath. "And I know it's selfish but Ned, I feel so awful right now, I have never been so scared in my entire life, and I want... I want a piece of you that no one else can have."

Ned slowly shook his head. "You don't... how can you not understand, Nancy, that no matter what happens tomorrow, I am never going to love anyone else on this earth the way I love you."

"Show me," she whispered, hating the naked plea in her voice. "Love me."

She closed her eyes when he kissed her, still without touching his mouth to hers, and she moaned with impatience but he was sliding her panties down her hips and that distracted her far more thoroughly than the absence of his kiss. She wrapped her legs around him and he stroked the curve of her ass, the point of her hip as she drew him tight to her.

"Go to sleep, Nan," he whispered, drawing a circle over the small of her back as she shivered and slid her arms around his neck. "You need to be strong for tomorrow."

And she was tired, so tired, but the fear had been able to hold it back. Her lungs were full of sand and she could feel the poison glittering metallic under her skin, enveloping her in a fine mist, soaking into Ned. He wouldn't kiss her, not the way he always did, because he didn't want her infection, her slow death, and she started to cry again.

"You don't want me."

She said it even though he very clearly did. Only the thin cotton of his boxers separated her from the evidence of his desire. "You know that celebration we're going to have?" he told her, his mouth against her ear, and she shivered at the touch of his breath. "When you're better? If you still want me, then..."

He didn't finish, and even though it was growing more and more difficult to even keep her eyes open, she heard the faint note of doubt in his voice. He did think she would get through it; he would swear that for as long as she needed him to. He just didn't think her resolve would make it through this, once she was better and they were back in River Heights, when it would be like none of this had ever happened.

"Promise?" she murmured sleepily.

"Promise," he said softly.

"So I'm going to make it."

"You are."

She had to muster up the strength to do it, but she forced her eyes open, gazing up into his. "Then kiss me," she said.

Her heart sank when he hesitated, but then he was kissing her, deeply, fully, his mouth warm on hers, tongue sliding against hers. She buried her hands in his hair and her breasts shifted against his chest and she felt again, that slight twinge, the low rumble of simmering desire. He was on top of her and she brought her knees up, opening her legs to him, grinding deliberately against him.

"It won't change," she swore to him, gasping as he pulled back. "This won't change."

He groaned, but when she started inching his boxers down, he grabbed her hands and held them in place. "It will," he said, forcing the words out. The thick length of him pressed against her thigh, but he didn't move away, and they gazed at each other, unmoving, her cheeks flushed with fever, something she couldn't let herself understand fighting in his eyes.

"When you're whole," he said, with finality, and only then did he shift his hips away from hers, only then did she let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "I don't want to cheapen it this way. Because you're not going to die," he told her sternly. "I won't let you."

She had seen the look on his face when he'd punched Paul. She couldn't doubt his determination.

"Besides, it'll give you something to live for."

Despite everything, the fact that she couldn't stop crying and the silt settling fine in her bones, the dull pound of her headache and her disappointment and tiny shameful relief over Ned's stubbornness even in the face of her temptingly naked body, she had to laugh. "I have to live, if only so we can sleep together."

"Exactly." He settled her in his arms again, kissing her forehead. "Now go to sleep, or I'll be forced to sing to you."

"Oh, anything but that," she murmured in mock horror, already beginning to drift away.

"I love you."

She smiled, nestling against his shoulder again. "I love you too."


End file.
